VS Thursday 2 November 2017 Ashburton Grove USA TV: FS1 4pm* ET While Spurs get ready to entertain some Royal team from Spain tomorrow, we host the mighty Reds from Serbia the day after. I wonder how the relative attendance/viewership will be? Oh well, back to the youngsters and the cup squad again. With the big question being whether to play Eddie the Messiah! Or Ospina if he’s fit? But does rotation really matter? We all know that Pep’s plethora of prodigies are going to wipe the floor with us on Sunday. If we’re smart, we’ll play high-tempo and go all out for the win, which would clinch our place in the knockout rounds. With 2 matches to spare! So instead, let’s all prepare for some agonizingly patient, possession-based build-up play, with little end-product, and 1 or 0 points earned. And lastly their Ultras. From what I could tell, they were pretty well-behaved at their place, even after a loss, no less! Let’s just pray they don’t bring their bad manners to London, and try to exact some revenge, or gloat in a result. They could make our Koln friends look like kindergartners. *Note: This should be the only match of ours affected by our country’s stupidly out of sync DST law. p.s. the power of negativistic reverse-jinx psychology lives on!
Wow the excitement in this thread is overwhelming! We should have team news within the hour. At least we know Ospina isn't going to figure. I think he'll probably play Cech for stability, like he did in Belgrade. But I wonder if he's giving Macey a think. Right about now their Ultras should be on a march through Londontown. Let's just hope they don't go and fvck things up.
Line up: Macey! AMN-Holding-Elneny-Debuchy-Nelson Willock-Coquellin Wilshere-Giroud-Walcott Edit: And the bench is Cech + 6 yutes! ... Eddie being one of them
Watching our match right now!!! I just got off ordering all 4 of this season's kits from Arsenal Direct (yes I DO support the club by buying from them instead of elsewhere!) they should be in in about 10 working days, but right now COYF'n'G!!!
Ospina misses that save that Macey slipped on purely because of height. The pitch is a bit too wet, basically wishboned poor Coquelin.
I'm also impressed by the performance of Matt Macey, remember that name, he will (at least after 45 minutes) be a good one, I like that he is not afraid to come off his line, make himself big and challenge shooters to the point where their shots go either over the bar or wide like in that last offensive chance by Red Star.
Footing, especially for both goalkeepers, may become an issue if it hasn't already, it will come down to perhaps one slip that could result in a goal being scored where if the pitch was better than what it is now that wouldn't be, let's see what happens in the second half. COYF'n'G!!!
Willock is actively ********ing up everything in the final third. He's getting into great positions and then just blowing it every single time.
Giroud has been trash for the past 20 minutes. The only movement he makes is pointing at the ground in front of his feet. Defending him must be a piece of cake today.
Why is that not good? He's our #10 who should be back in game shape. Who should look better? El Neny? Walcott?
Irritating game. Red Star Belgrade didn't want to play and looked to break up any consistent play with fouls/feigned injuries/smoke break/etc...
Couldn't watch it live, so I just finished zipping through it on my DVR. Thoughts... First Half: Macey was great. Willock & Debuchy pretty good. Many empty seats! Way more than League Cup last Tues. Lame! Second Half: Nelson dangerous, at least at the start. Wilshere was good... fulcrum of our attack. Eddie was given 20 minutes, played a slightly different role, and proved that he's... not yet our messiah. Overall: Sloppy passing. We were anemic offensively, and perhaps just barely edged them. We are VERY lucky that their forwards are poor... at controlling balls, and especially putting shots on frame! But hey! We advance out of the group, with 2 games to spare. And I live to fight another day... but only one more, I promise!
We should’ve been losing 2-0 in the first half second-half is much better, Jacky boy man of the match . The midfield generally was bad. Some of the distribution play was a day late and a dollar short. And the referee was awful. Not a bad game from our two wingbacks, looked composed and alive.
best part of this match was Darko Milcic Darko Milcic, ex #GrindCity, a pleno en las tribunas del Estrella Roja, frente al Arsenal pic.twitter.com/2IvW4jUq1c— BA Ball (@ba_ballOK) November 3, 2017
New thread is up https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/man-city-vs-arsenal-epl-5-nov-2017.2077855/ A little birdy tells me that it will get more than 1 page of posts.